Hacking The Next Generation

Pros

Modern methods used to attack networks, not a rehash of older outdated information.

Covers a range of different types of attack and even how several can be used together.

Some real life examples and case studies (only the names have been changed).

Cons

Assumes a reasonable knowledge of security.

Description

First Edition: September 2008

279 page paperback

Published by O'Reilly

ISBN: 9780596154585

Authors Nitesh Dhanjani, Billy Rios, and Brett Hardin

Review

"Be prepared, not scared" says one of the review quotes on the back of the book which I thought was really appropriate since this is a rather scary book. Scary in te number of vulnerabilities that systems have which may be completely open to attack if you are not aware of the attack methods that ths book describes so that you can prepare a defence against them.

Given the size of the book, it covers a large range of different aspects of modern computer security with loads of useful information on how information can be gathered from a variety of sources in order to be able to breach the security of other systems. What is particularly interesting is all the vulnerabilities that it covers which by themselves do not appear to pose much risk but which when combined together represent a huge risk.

In the hands of someone attempting to break into computer systems this book provides a whole lot of useful information in one place (but which probably could have been pieced together from other sources anyway). The benefits to those attempting to secure those systems against attack are even gtreater though. The attacker only needs to find enough information to be able to work out one way that they can successfully break into a stsyem and so would only need to use a small part of the information in this book to break into an unprotected system. They could easily obtain that small amount of information from elsewhere. The defender though needs to defend against all possible attacks and so having all of this information readily available in the one book is of great benefit to them.

It's still scary just how easy many of the attack methods the book describes are but the first step in defending against attack is identifying ways in which an attack might take place so as to prepare a defence and this book will greatly assist with this.